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[/left][/center][/justify]Dear Regent,
I'm a 36 years old Chasidic man, who grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When I attended yeshiva, secular education was a little better than it is today. We had 1 hour and 45 minutes of English studies 4 days a week, for 7 years. The studies weren't really taken seriously, and there was no professional curriculum to build on the progress year after year.
By the time we were 13 years old, during our last year of secular studies, most of my class was able to read on a third or fourth grade level. In math, we reached up to long division. In the last year, there was an attempt to teach some fractions, but the class wasn't ready and wasn't motivated.
We had some books on history, science and social studies. These books were rarely used. Personally, I loved to read, so I read many of those books during recess and lunch time.
After I got married, I decided to work on a degree. I went to an Orthodox college, and I was from the lucky ones. The education I got in yeshiva – as dismal as it was – was better than what many other Chasidic students got in their yeshivas. Many of them had to drop out, because it was impossible for them to follow along. Since I was able to read English (albeit on a fourth grade level), I was able to build upon it. It was extremely hard, but I made it through. To me this demonstrated the difference between zero education, and some resemblance of one. No doubt had I had a decent basic education, as the law demands, my path would have been much easier, and I'd have way more opportunities to explore.
G-d granted us precious children – among them 3 boys. They are in a Chasidic yeshiva, and while the Hebrew studies are now better than they were when I was a child, the secular education is way worse.
The kids don't get the basics of secular education. The time allotted for English studies is about an hour a day, 4 days a week, for 5 years. The teachers are in most cases completely incompetent, who can barely speak English and don't know the basics, like the multiplication table. There are almost no books, and there's no curriculum.
Our 13 year old, a bright and inquisitive child who's thank G-d doing very well in his Hebrew studies, has already "graduated" the English studies, and he can't write a coherent sentence in English. My wife and I spent many hours to help him get some education, but there's only so much parents can do after a full day at school. Our son reads English well, thanks to the work we did together. He's the only one in his class of 36 that understands and reads English beyond a second grade level. Since he's already 13 years old, there's now zero secular education in yeshivah.
Our younger sons are currently in cheder (elementary school), and are going through the same educational neglect. There's no interest in providing a robust basic education. To the yeshiva administration, taking basic secular studies seriously is a laughable and ridiculous idea.
The lack of education is even deeper than simple English. There is no educational mindset; there's no real reading or writing curriculum even in Yiddish or Hebrew. (At the start of each school-year kids get a Yiddish writing book, but bring it back home mostly empty at the end of the year.) The average Chasidic teen can't write a simple essay in ANY language.
And we don't have a choice here. We are Chasidic Jews, and we want to bring up our children in this heritage. We need them to attend a Chasidic school, as did we, and the generations before us. We should not be forced to drop our heritage, just so our children should be able to get a basic decent education – as is their right.
The educational neglect is not a question about Judaism or Chasidic belief. All Chasidic yeshivas – including the big yeshivas like Satmar and Bobov – were originally built with a decent secular studies component. Yeshiva leaders simply neglected their moral, educational, and financial responsibility to ensure their students are properly prepared for their future.
Yeshiva leaders are fighting against attempts to fix this horrible neglect, to cover for their gross incompetence. They simply don't want to take upon themselves the responsibility of teaching secular studies – a duty that they so successfully managed to get away with for the last few decades.
Yeshiva activists tout graduates of the few ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that do provide some education, and the scores of non-Chasidic yeshivas that provide a good education, and use them to cover up for the educational neglect in most other Chasidic yeshivas. Instead of spending money to correct this horrible problem, yeshiva leaders spend it on PR and propaganda. But if one wants to believe no one, and just wants to find out the hard cold facts: get a group of unbiased educators to visit the Satmar yeshiva on a *random* day, and ask basic educational questions from *random* students. These yeshiva leaders are experts in putting up a show. Talk to random students on a random, unannounced day, and the sad facts will fully emerge.
Many parents are afraid of government intervention. But they, too, readily admit that the current situation has to change. It is a tragedy of titanic proportion.
Personally, I'm more afraid of the educational neglect than the government intervention. I believe that if the yeshiva leaders would think in terms of actually fixing the issue, and not in terms of how to fool the government, they would have been able to negotiate a solid education for our children that is close to what yeshivas originally provided before the era of neglect, and close enough to satisfy the State.
I therefore beseech you to approve Rule # EDU-27-19-00010-P, and to force the yeshivas to comply with the State regulations to provide a decent education. Approximately 3 hours of secular studies a day is fully consistent with the Jewish religion and Chasidic values. We need it, you need it, and most importantly, our children need it.
Thank you very much,
